


The Line is Neverending

by feathershollyandgolly



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canon Compliant, M/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Timeline Shenanigans, bi! steve, i hope i didn't retcon too much, slightly AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-06-26 21:09:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19776472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feathershollyandgolly/pseuds/feathershollyandgolly
Summary: Though subtle changes are made, the rope of time remains static. Steve always had a choice, if only he’d make it.Alternative scenarios in Endgame with Stucky in mind.





	1. Coming Home

**Author's Note:**

> One out of a collection of many. I was really distraught after Endgame so I wrote a bunch of Oneshots that I never ended up finishing. So here they are now.

“I believe I owe you a dance.”

Peggy stared at the man in the doorway in disbelief. Her brow was set, serious. 

“Steve?” She tilted her head ever so slightly, asking a question while commanding an answer. She looked beautiful, striking as always.

“It’s me, Peggs.” He smiled. “I made it.” 

The door swung open and he bathed in the light of his newfound paradise. 

There it was, his dreams unfolding before him. This was the life he had wished for. A sweet melody rose from the record player as he strode forward. The world was filled with color, warmth from the lamp next to the couch, warmth from the light shimmering through the window.

"I thought you were dead.”

“It takes more than a plane to kill me,” Steve said, smiling ever so slightly. “You know that I’ll always get back up again.”

She pulled him close. He could finally feel the empty tremors that filled his bones lighten. He could finally breathe a sigh of relief to a long-running war that should have been over. 

“I’m so glad you’re back,” she whispered.

They swayed around the room to the rhythm of their bright-eyed youth. Steve was tired. He was in his thirties, mentally, yet he felt a thousand years old.

“I’m glad too.”

_ It’s been a long, long time _ . The record whispered and echoed through the room. He wanted to return to that ethereal glow of today, wishing for the love of his life back, wishing for that final dance. Peggy was one of the only people who ever saw him as anyone before he was anyone. Perhaps he was out of practice. Perhaps it was because he had no practice at all. It didn’t matter.

He laughed as though there was a tomorrow to look forward to. She smiled and guided him as he stumbled over his own feet. 

“You’ve changed,” she said. She looked serious again. She was always good at noticing things.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, love, change is inevitable. The future always brings new challenges.” 

“I want to retire,” admitted Steve. “I want to live my life to its fullest instead of burying myself in another war.”

“You know it isn’t that simple” Peggy shook her head. “What about progress?”

But he had already made that progress. He had already seen it enacted, seen a world that was new and needed the new instead of an old world with past problems. He could change things now. 

He could make them better.

“I’m not really from here.”

Peggy looked unsurprised. 

“You’re not,” Peggy agreed. Her gaze was fierce, sharp yet sentimental. She gripped him strongly, as though she was afraid of letting go. “You should protect what means the most to you.”

“But you do.”

“I’m not yours.” She paused and averted her eyes. “You’re not mine.”

Steve couldn’t tell what she meant by it. If it had always been that way, or if it was because he had jumped through time. Was he ever someone else’s?

“Then I’ll do what I can,” he amended.

“You deserve this dance, I don’t know if I’m the one who was supposed to give it.” It sounded as though it hurt for her to say it. As though she always knew something was wrong from the second he arrived. 

“Then dance with me. Just this once."

He held her close when he could. He prayed when he had to, and the melody that sang through him was filled with nothing but yearning. He had been dreaming his whole life, waiting for movement then waiting for silence then waiting for the warmth of the ones he loved.

He was in heaven. If only he knew how to die.

-

“Coming back in five, four, three, two…” 

The quantum time machine whirred to life, gold singing off of the metallic surface in sparks and swirls. The form of a man standing tall solidified in the center. His blue gaze was fixed on nothing. He gripped the hammer in his hand.

“Welcome back, Captain,” Sam called. “How was the trip?”

To them, nothing had happened at all.

“It was good.” He glanced to Bucky and smiled. “I had a nice time.” To him, it was everything.

Bucky stared back, returning the smile. Steve was glad to see him. The whistle of the record still played in his ears, faint and persistent. The croon of a voice and the blare of a brass beat from the world he left behind.

“Did anything happen?” Bucky asked softly. 

“Finally had that dance I was looking for,” he replied, striding down the steps towards the gathering group. The music faded.

“That all?” Sam raised an eyebrow. 

“Steve has two left feet,” Bucky snorted. 

“Thanks, Buck,” Steve rolled his eyes. A slow grin spread across his face. “I’m glad to be back.” 

“You know,” Bruce said, stepping from behind the control panel. “I expected you to stay.

“I wouldn’t do that to you guys,” Steve replied. He inhaled sharply. “No. I wouldn’t. The world still needs me, and I don’t really fit in back there.”

They all stared at him in surprise. There was a glint of something in Bucky’s eyes, something somber and welcoming all at once. It was overwhelming, this culmination of everything from the past century. Bucky sent him a small smile. Steve smiled back. He couldn’t stop smiling as he watched his friends, his found  _ family _ gather together to welcome him back.

Steve worked diligently to memorize the features of the ones he had left. The pitch of their laughter. The glow of life in their eyes. At any moment it felt as though their existence would slip through his fingers again. He could see them vanishing before him, voices drowning into the distance.

Sam and Bruce were walking towards the house for lunch. They always faded when he blinked, turning to sand in the air and floating away. Would this be the last time he saw them? Would he ever see them again? 

“Steve?”

Bucky’s gaze locked with his. Sam and Bruce had disappeared down the hill to get lunch. They were alone. His brow furrowed in concern. His eyes shone like to the world Steve had seen from space. He should have been there. He would have fit right in.

“You okay?”

“I’m alright, Buck.” Steve cleared his throat. “Just thinking.” 

“Don’t strain yourself,” Bucky said wryly. 

“Jerk.”

“Punk.” 

Bucky paused, his smile dropping. A chilled breeze rippled through the trees.  _ It’s been a long, long time. _

“You could have stayed.” Bucky averted his eyes, looking towards the lake. “Is one dance all you wanted?”

There were so many years behind his eyes. So much time lost. Five years. Ten years. Seventy years. Bucky had asked Steve if it was worth it. No matter how many years passed, the answer was always the same. 

Steve smiled. He rested an arm on Bucky’s shoulder. He flinched less than he used to. 

“This is where I belong, pal. Everything I want is right here.”

Bucky’s eyes widened, clear and blue like the sky before a storm. A flock of sparrows rose against the lake. 

“'Til the end of the line?” Bucky whispered, trying to recognize his own words. He looked back to Steve for reassurance.

“'Til the end of the line,” Steve confirmed. “It’s a promise I intend to keep.”

The end of the line.  _ The end of time. _

What a foolish, beautiful sentiment.

“We should head down together,” said Bucky. He pursed his lips. It seemed as though he wanted to say more, the shadows under his eyes lighter but never gone. 

Steve understood. He didn’t pry. 

“Lead the way."

They walked down the hill together, the quantum time machine shrinking into a convenient ant-ish contraption that fit in a box. Bruce was apparently too hungry to remember it. Bucky had pointed this out. Steve laughed. This wasn’t golden. This was  _ real.  _ This was his. 

Their hands brushed against each other. A quiet nod of gratefulness. 

There was something about loss that was uncanny. The remembrance of every bead of sweat that trickled down his forehead as he watched the screaming silhouette of his best friend fall into those snow-covered peaks. The horror that trembled through him as he found his eyes meeting those that should have been gone. 

The feeling of dust falling away to reveal nothing.

“Do you think they’re going to know?” Bucky asked. 

“No. But I’ll tell them.” Steve glanced to his shield, heavy on his arm. 

They wandered down together, their future unfolding before them.  _ Welcome to the future, pal. _ Bucky had taken him there after all. It was blinding. It was beautiful. He could feel a smile tug at his cheeks and tears tug at his eyes. The universe had driven them apart with every fiber of its being and Steve had willed it away with every breath of his own. As the sky fell into the single pinprick of time they shared, they clung to the earth until their ghosts returned for the last time. 

The trees had become a molten shade of reds and greens and oranges confused about the season but drifting in the direction of the wind. Summer approached autumn. Their feet crushed fallen leaves. 

“Hey, it’s lunchtime!” Sam waved them over to the house. “Are you going to get here in this decade or the next one?”

“We’re catching up!” Bucky called back. “We lost a good seventy-five years!”

“I’m calling this batch of burgers for myself, slowpokes.”

“You just envy our old man patience.” 

“I hope your stomachs are patient too.” Sam took a bite of the burger in his hand. “Because I wasn’t kidding, first batch is gone.”

Steve’s stomach growled. Sadly, he  _ was _ actually hungry. He glanced at Bucky, who was grinning like it didn’t matter and they had all the time in the world. He hoped that they did.

Out of all of the things to have happened to them, they deserved it.


	2. 1991

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AU where Steve and Tony go back to 1991 instead of 1970. AU where they meet the Winter Soldier. Where everything is revealed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I know the tesseract wasn't in 1991 but I had this idea that the Starks had it and were moving it covertly without even telling SHIELD?? Anyway, my friend came up with the idea of 1991, and I really ran with it. There's some (?) graphic depictions of violence here? But I don't know what's considered too much so I put the warning on the fic. Take it as you will.

Tires screeched against the pavement. The sky was an inkwell black, trickling into thinning trees and a crackling dirt road. The silhouette of a darkened figure, a ghost rearing its head, slipped between the yellowing streetlights and trailed the car like a shadow. A gleaming hand reached towards the trigger. Weapon drawn. 

A shot resounded through the woods. 

“I know where this is,” Tony breathed. “Why the hell would you take us here-”

The thistle hollows under his eyes were darker with his face so pale. Trembling hands reached tentatively towards his companion. He was received with a sympathetic glance. The air was screaming.

“We shouldn’t be here, I was sending us to the seventies,” Steve hissed. “We shouldn’t be here.”

“You’re repeating yourself. God, do you do that too? Repeat yourself when you’re under stress? Happens to me a shit ton, really. Are you bothered by that, my language? Sorry.” He didn’t seem too sorry, but the quivering whisper he sent was not humorous at all. He reeled back, heart pounding and eyes wide. The world was spinning. 

The Winter Soldier approached his target 

“God, Tony, I’m so sorry,” Steve began.

“Now is not the time for your stupid apologies,” Tony shook his head and pressed forward. “I can’t-can’t focus really well right now.”

“I can go. You don’t have to.”

“Shut up. I’ll do it.”

“I’m serious, Tony. I would never make you do this.”

“What about you, wiseass? You don’t want to do this either.” His voice continued to shake, but he stalked forward to the form of a man standing over a familiar yellow car. 

It was a sickening, rotting color, choking the air and stark against a void of skeletal branches. Tony watched as Steve stared ahead, eyes distant. He was looking at the Winter Soldier, who approached silently, graceful and calculated with every step. 

The Winter Soldier twisted the meaning of ‘beautiful’ in the ballet he performed. The black swan. His tangling hair cast streaked shadows in his eyes and his eyes darted towards the car, ruthless. Cries echoed from the front seats. Tony could hear his father’s name. 

He staggered. 

“I’m getting it,” Steve pushed in front of him. “I’ll be back.”

Tony couldn’t say a word. His vision was blurring, his hands clutching a thin tree. There it was. The pull at his gut. The ripping at his throat, the tightening of his lungs. He knew it was the only way. Part of him wanted to point his weapon and fire. 

Part of him wanted to be done with it all, to find the catharsis he had been looking for his whole life.

He could see his parents as the life faded from their eyes. As his mother pleaded and cried for his father. That car crash was no accident. There was a man behind that gun. There always was. Tony felt the bile rise in his throat as his legs finally gave out and he had to sit as quietly as he could on the forest floor. He could hear when they stopped struggling. He could hear the soldier remove his grip and step back, observing his work.

The Winter Soldier wasn’t apologetic. He wasn’t cruel. He only watched, calm and wordless as he ensured the victims’ deaths. He strode towards the highway camera and shot. Once. Twice. The camera buzzed out. 

Tony’s mouth had gone dry as he collapsed against the tree and stared at the star-covered sky. The ghost had won, vanishing into the night for another twenty years. How could Steve risk life and limb for a man who didn’t even remember his own name?

He looked back to Steve, who waved and gave him a silent ‘are you okay?’. He nodded in return. Steve sent a thumbs up— _what a hero—_ and turned away again. That idiot was stalling. He was staring at the figure on the highway with that same inscrutable expression he always had. He was putting on a brave face. 

And good god, Tony had never seen him like this. Restraining himself while his face pales and his eyes widen, so he can move without holding a hand out to the beast.

Steve was still trying to bring him back, and even worse, he knew that the Bucky he was watching was not his.

The Winter Soldier’s blank eyes looked to nothing, not even recognizing the figures in the car. He said nothing, gaze steady. Cold. Calculating yet wild. Not without mercy, but without humanity. 

Tony had been a supplier many years ago. He had stopped himself from doing it because he could. He saved thousands of lives because the choice had been in his hands the whole time. The soldier never had choices to begin with. This man was not Bucky. Not the Bucky that Steve had loved within an inch of his life. No, this man standing in the middle of the road and lowering his gun was a weapon. 

Whether he pulled the trigger or not didn’t matter when he had no control in the first place.

* * *

Steve crouched on the other side of the car. He could hear the choked sounds of Maria, struggling against a metal grip. He could see the glint off of pale blue eyes. The darkness had dripped away from the sky and blurred into the trees. The yellow of the car, of the road, all searing like the golden light of the past and miserable like the blue future. He reached into the trunk.

He heard the crack of a neck. 

He twisted around and watched Tony. He was sick. Eyes wide, shaking and horrified. Steve trembled as his hand wrapped itself around the second briefcase under the serum. This wasn’t the soldier’s mission. HYDRA must have not even known about it. He could feel the void of that man, a man without a past, without anything. He could return all of it now. He could say something, anything. He would probably be shot for his troubles.

 _Bucky._ His brain supplied to him. _He’s in there, somewhere._ In the calloused figure that loomed over two corpses, carrying the weapon to supply more soldiers. In those cold eyes, emptied and desperate all at once. Wild. It was Bucky. It wasn’t.

Steve could remember the same sway of his shoulders. The same lines of his features. With the case secured and close to his chest, he took a final glance. 

Worry lines etched into a face of stone. The same that Steve remembered from cold winters as they staggered inside, ears red, faces flushed, holding what little money they could scrounge. A sadness unreadable as Steve coughed and hacked until he couldn’t breathe. On some days, it was better. On some days, it was worse. Those tired eyes reflected the same. Home. Brooklyn. 

He could hear it. A train screaming into the alps. A man screaming into the void. A hand. Reaching to find its salvation only to feel it slip away into the quiet. Longing. Tears. The burn of whiskey against the back of his throat. No healing, no prayers. The miracle stuff couldn’t cure the worst aches inside of him. A promise at the tip of a tongue, drawing from his last breath as he dived into frozen depths to meet the other half of his soul. He hoped, he lost, he found once more. 

A gun was drawn. Pointed at Steve’s head, pushing into his skin. The soldier was silent. His gaze bored down towards his target. Steve gripped the handle of the briefcase. Cold metal to callused hand. 

Steve didn’t want to return the glance. He was afraid that as he reached out, nothing would reach back. He was afraid that the second he tried to move, a bullet would scream through his head and out the other side. His eyes, squeezed shut, began to open. 

He looked back, tentative. Pleading eyes stared at him. Pleading eyes _knew_ him. They begged him for a name. He could feel it. The weapon against his skull was trembling.

“Bucky,” Steve whispered. "Your name."

The gun fell. The soldier said nothing. His face twitched. His arm recalibrated, clicks of thousands of mechanisms working in unison filling the quiet winter air. Steve held a hand out. The soldier turned away. 

With that, he was gone.

Motorcycle howling into the dark, down the long winding road until he vanished. Steve stared as he disappeared. He turned to Tony. He approached him quietly, still waiting for a threat lurking down the lonely road. 

"Lets get back," Steve said, adjusting the device on his wrist. He rubbed at his eyes. 

"Lets." Tony rubbed at his own as well. 

Neither of them wanted to talk about it. Not when Tony's parents were right there, lifeless in the front seats of their car. Not when they had so little time.

A glow began to engulf the two of them as they slipped through time, finally coming back to the world they knew. After watching the soldier, Steve understood more. The soldier was a ghost, lost with an empty shell of a vessel in his place. The soldier had murdered Tony's parents. The soldier was Bucky. It was not Steve's decision, whether Bucky was guilty of anything. It was the soldier who decided, who still lurked in the shadows of Bucky's sullen frame. It was Tony, who had to witness the death of his parents firsthand in order to save the world. Who was willing to, as long as he could go home at the end of the day. As long as everyone was safe. 

More than anything, he hoped that Tony had forgiven him just as much as he had forgiven Tony. It was a foolish argument to have. 

He only wished their friendship didn't have to be ripped apart like this. That, when the day came, they would stand together again.

They would trust each other again. 


	3. Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You came back for me?” came a rasp from an unused voice, trembling and unsure. 
> 
> “Of course I did, I promised, didn’t I?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last one! Sorry these are so short and so small, I just wanted to explore these three ideas :0 
> 
> If you're telling me that Steve doesn't go back in time to save Bucky in an alternate timeline, you're wrong.

Sirens wailed. Footsteps crashed against metallic platforms, guided by winding hallways and screams. He could feel his heart pounding as a thrum in his skull. If the Winter Soldier was a ghost story, he was a nightmare. A lost lover from the grave. 

As the hollow echoes down the iron-clad halls filled the room, so too did the gunshots. The smell of rust, permeating the ground beneath his feet just as it did the air. 

It was silent otherwise.

A HYDRA agent lunged at him from a side corridor, but he whirled around and used the man’s momentum to swing him over the side of the balcony. The next one swung a kick. Dodge. Duck. Hit. His shield slammed into the agent’s chin, knocking them off and into the wall. There were more coming.

“You’re a fool to come here, Captain,” hissed a familiar voice, crackling through a speaker above. 

Zola.

The red of the siren lights flared against his skin, spinning and barely illuminating his path ahead. The chambers _,_ as they liked to call it, were down the hall and to the right. He only had a few hundred feet between himself and his goal, and he refused to allow a disembodied voice to change that. He glared at the closest speaker. He threw his shield and crushed it. 

“Now, now, there’s no need to get defensive,” the voice, slippery and soulless, continued its remarks. It was grinning. “You might know where he is, but he’ll never know who you are. We made sure of that.”

“He’ll know me,” he growled back. He slugged an agent in the face. He deflected his shield across the narrowed hall and hit the next one. 

“Don’t dilute yourself, captain.”

“Shut the hell up, man,” he hit another speaker. The voice faded.

He crept down the hall. He could see it, glistening at the end of the corridor. The door, hatched and bolted shut not to keep out, but to keep in. The storage facility for the “asset” they had been stowing away. 

The ghost would be home soon. To one, it had taken seventy-five years. To another, only a few months. The Captain knew this.

He kicked the door down, ripping it off the wall. A creak reverberated through the air, through his bones. He gazed across the room of wires and metal and the stench of electricity in the air.

The soldier, the lover, was encased in ice. His features were pristine but his expression remained restless. Eyes closed, bracing for impact. The captain remembered the ice well. He remembered the cold. 

No. He couldn’t go back there when he must deal with here. 

“It’s going to be okay,” he murmured to the man behind the glass. “I’m going to get you out of here, Buck.”

The numbers were punched in, memorized with ease from a control panel many rooms away. The thawing began. He awaited the arrival: anticipating, anxious. Vigilant. 

The Captain twisted around, checking his surroundings, glancing at the horrors that may enter his path. No one dared enter. He gripped tight the shield that he was once told he didn’t deserve. 

Behind him, the door clicked open.

Silence. The Captain turned back around and faced his friend, his lover, the other side of his soul. Hollow eyes stared back, not empty, but lost.

“It’s me, Buck. It’s Steve.”

And from that moment, Captain America was gone. Steve Rogers had taken his place, shaking and watching as the Winter Soldier opened his mouth to speak.

“You came back for me?” came a rasp from an unused voice, trembling and unsure. 

“Of course I did, I promised, didn’t I?”

The soldier closed his eyes, he opened them. He closed them again. He grabbed Steve’s arm with his flesh hand, gripping tight enough to bruise.

“You’re real.” A pause. “You’re alive.”

Steve smiled. “It isn’t the end of the line just yet.”

He held out a gloved hand, calloused, covered in blood and sweat. 

The Soldier's gaze trailed to the shield. Around the wrinkles beginning to form around Steve’s eyes. 

Slowly, surely, the Soldier grasped his hand and pulled him into a warm embrace. Chests heaving, hearts pounding against one another. Close. Vivid. 

“Come on, Buck. Let’s get out of here.”

Bucky Barnes clung tight, sobbing into the shoulder of what he knew the most. Weak yet indomitable. Steve Rogers clung back, waiting for the world to crumble once more, hoping that this time, it didn't. Wisened. Older. Wishing for the time that they never had. 

The Captain and the Soldier, after almost a century of fighting, had finally come home. 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [love at last sight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20458841) by [vinndetta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinndetta/pseuds/vinndetta)




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